Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action

Book Description

Prototype and Scriptaculous are libraries that extend standard Ajax. They make it easier to program Ajax and provide powerful features like drag and drop and animation. In this book, developers learn by playing and see how the libraries work in the real world.

As experience with Ajax increases, developers want the standard Ajax capabilities they repeatedly use to be preprogrammed for them--and that's exactly what Ajax libraries do for them. They reduce the pain of handling cross-browser inconsistencies, they add useful language features, and provide sophisticated functionality. Of these, Prototype is the most popular JavaScript and Ajax framework for low-level user interface features such as animation, drag and drop, and pre-built widgets. Together, they free the developer up to concentrate on building the application. They make a rich user experience easy to achieve.

This book guides the reader through the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries feature-by-feature. In just 350 pages, readers will find over 100 small working examples to help them explore the libraries. As well, they will develop a web-based image gallery that teacher them how to use Prototype and Scriptaculous in the real-world.

Customer Reviews:

Top-notch tome.......2007-06-25

Javascript has exploded onto the web development scene in the last few years, and powers much of the web 2.0 and Ajax revolution. Every web developer now needs to know how to do common Ajax tasks. Thankfully, Prototype and Scriptaculous In Action makes it both easy and enjoyable.

This is a comprehensive book. The size (510 pages) was initially intimidating, but Prototype and Scriptaculous In Action is exceedingly well written and a genuine pleasure to read. The thorough and thoughtful organization of the book provides some real structure to the discussion, making complex subjects easily digestible. This is the defacto bible of Prototype and Scriptaculous, and these days I turn to this book more than anything else on my shelf.

The book is divided up into four multi-chapter parts, any of which could stand on it's own as a definitive guide. The chapters are full of useful examples, and there's strong emphasis given to migrating existing sites to Prototype and Scriptaculous, which is a major plus. You could turn to any section of the book and immediately see how to inject some new behavior into your existing application, but if you take the time to read from cover-to-cover you'll be rewarded with some deep understanding of both the libraries and Javascript itself.

I'll summarize the four parts of the book:

Part 1, Getting Started, introduces the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries, focusing heavily on Prototype and Ajax. There's a lot of information on re-designing an existing site for Ajax. Two full chapters are devoted to Prototype's Ajax features. You can get up and running VERY quickly after glancing through these chapters. There's also a lot of depth, and consideration is given to the pervasive effects Ajax has on architectural issues and the new ways that an application will have to manage HTTP traffic.

Part 2, Scriptaculous Quickly, covers effects, controls and drag-n-drop. This is hands-down the best Scriptaculous documentation currently available, anywhere. The core effects are explored and tweaked, and there's lot of very practical examples demonstrating some of the niftiest stuff, like running effects in parallel versus sequentially. And the drag-and-drop coverage is incredibly clear, making it easy, almost trivial, to implement. The Scriptaculous coverage is indispensable, and you'll return to it again and again if you implement Scriptaculous-enabled pages.

Part 3, Prototype in Depth, explores Prototype's Javascript-oriented features. There's a fantastic chapter on functions contexts, and the discussion of closures is one of the best I've seen. There's a lot of information about Javascript fundamentals, and how Prototype can be used to implement inheritance, address arrays, and manipulate the DOM in the browser.

And finally, Part 4 Advanced Topics, has two unrelated chapters. The first chapter overhauls an example app, giving it a Prototype and Scriptaculous makeover. The last chapter is about integration with Ruby on Rails. Prototype was initially written as the Ajax interface to Rails, so there's some strong integration.

As a long-time enterprise web developer, dealing with Javascript has always been a chore. But now I actually (gasp) look forward to tasks that involve Javascript. I'm a convert, and I have Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action to thank.

Excellent.......2007-05-22

I wrote a longer review that Amazon has apparently lost. Oh well. This is an excellent book, very well written. The authors are the rarest kind of technical author: they can actually construct prose that is pleasant to read, not deadly boring, but which works well as a reference book later. The book's organized thoughtfully--it's certainly much more than just an API reference. There's also quite a lot of general advanced Javascript information here, too.

There's at least one other book on these libraries in production from Pragmatic Programmers. If you're considering that, I strongly suggest downloading the sample chapters of both books and comparing. The Crane book is much more appealing to me (not to mention it's available now, not in six months).

Basic libraries coverage with a good example application........2007-04-19

This book lacked detailed coverage of the programming techniques and advanced topics of prototype and scriptaculous. The authors covered the basics by discussing only the API's of the libraries (more attention was given to scriptaculous API's, even though its usage is obvious and prototype API's are more extensive). With 500 pages and the libraries as the title, I expected details about the inner workings of the API's and discussions about its usages/ applications. Instead, 150 pages were devoted to verbose repetitive coverage of scriptaculous' API, which could easily have fitted into 50 pages at most. ALL of the info on scriptaculous could easily have been read online at its wiki site - the book provided no further insight (ch. 5 is especially useless)! Prototype's coverage was decent, but lacked details on several parts of its API. Although prototype and scriptaculous are tightly integrated with Rails, there was only 1 chapter devoted to its discussion, which served more like an overview than a usage guide. Based on content on the libraries alone, I would give this book 3 stars. However, if you're in need of an example application, then it may deserve 4 stars. This book provides a good example of applying prototype's ajax and scriptaculous web 2.0 techniques to a photo gallery website. It shows the advantages these libraries have over plain javascript and dhtml. The extra 100 pages wasted on scriptaculous would better serve Rails' RJS templates or a more complete/ thorough discussion of prototype. Of course it can be argued that the book is not titled, "Prototype, Scriptaculous, and Rails in Action," but it should be.

Ajax for Web Application Developers (Developer's Library)

Average customer rating:

real world Ajax MVC
Kris shows you engineering side of the AJAX
No customer service
Understand how AJAX/JavaScript toolkits really work, and write your own
New to Ajax? You may want to look elsewhere ...

Ajax for Web Application Developers (Developer's Library)
Kris Hadlock
Manufacturer: Sams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0672329123

Book Description

Reusable components and patterns for Ajax-driven applications

Ajax is one of the latest and greatest ways to improve users’ online experience and create new and innovative web functionality. By allowing specific parts of a web page to be displayed without refreshing the entire page, Ajax significantly enhances the experience of web applications. It also lets web developers create intuitive and innovative interaction processes.

Ajax for Web Application Developers provides the in-depth working knowledge of Ajax that web developers need to take their web applications to the next level. The book shows how to create an Ajax-driven web application from an object-oriented perspective, and it includes discussion of several useful Ajax design patterns.

This detailed guide covers the creation of connections to a MySQL database with PHP 5 via a custom Ajax engine and shows how to gracefully format the response with CSS, JavaScript, and XHTML while keeping the data tightly secure. It also covers the use of four custom Ajax-enabled components in an application and how to create each of them from scratch.

The final section of the book combines the individual code examples and techniques from earlier chapters of the book into one larger, Ajax-driven application–an internal web mail application that can be used in any user-based application, such as a community-based web application. Readers will learn not only how to create and use their own reusable Ajax components in this application

but also how to connect their components to any future Ajax applications that they might build.

Web Development/Ajax/JavaScript

$34.99 USA / $43.99 CAN / £24.99 Net UK

Customer Reviews:

real world Ajax MVC.......2007-04-20

Kris did a really good job to be developer friendly. Even thought there are some "TODO" list in he sample, the coding style is very clean, show real world Ajax MVC implementation. It could be better if Kris can go little deep, for example, mini-MVC inside view object, feel the "display" will be too heavy if object has lots of events attached. Overall, it's a nice reading.

Kris shows you engineering side of the AJAX.......2007-03-29

I have attended Kris Hadlock's presentation in AJAXWORLD Conference & EXPO last week. I am glad I did because I really wanted to learn how to write reusable JavaScript libraries in my projects. His book is all about AJAX but engineering side of it. Why? because I found not many books out there show you how to capture server errors and record them for debugging and improvement in your project. Not many books show you how to implement the back-end for your frond-end applications. Not many books give you real-world examples. "
Ajax for Web Application Developers" does all for you. It's very simple to understand Kris' codings and explanations because his book is neatly coded and implemented the coding standards.

SOURCE CODES: Demonstrated examples in the book can be downloaded from the publisher. All you need to do is to create an account.

I personally have many AJAX books in my library but specifically liked "Ajax for Web Application Developers".

I strongly recommend it to those who are willing to learn in an easy way to create reusable JavaScript object-oriented libraries and understand the AJAX object methodology.

Good luck

No customer service.......2007-03-27

Bought the book, liked the author's intent but I ran into one big problem. No source code for the book. I emailed the publisher last week and heard zero back from them.

Note to publishers: Take care of your readers.

I'm afraid customer service is dead. Maybe it has been outsourced.

Understand how AJAX/JavaScript toolkits really work, and write your own.......2007-02-16

First, let me agree with the previous reviewer who noted that this isn't an AJAX book for beginners. It isn't. I don't think anyone claimed that it was. It's a book for web application developers seeking to incorporate AJAX technology into web applications. I wouldn't expect a book with that kind of scope to be appropriate for beginners. This one certainly isn't, and I'm glad, having read enough beginner AJAX books that go over what an XmlHttpRequest is and explain some of the commonly used "stupid JavaScript tricks", dropping the names of popular frameworks and toolkits along the way without really supplying much information about them.

Having said that: I've been seeking a book with the scope of this book for quite a while now. Not since Nicholas Zakas' book "Professional JavaScript for Web Developers" (which I still highly recommend) has this kind of in-depth coverage of the inner workings of AJAX been offered up. Zakas' book (only two years old) went into great detail about using Javascript to do all the cool things we now know as "AJAX"... without once using the word. (Two years ago the word "AJAX" hadn't reached its present buzzword saturation level, if it had been used much at all.)

Hadlock revisits the technology now that AJAX and the various toolkits and frameworks supporting it (Dojo, script.aculo.us, Google Web Toolkit, etc.) have become commonplace. He doesn't provide a tutorial on how to use a particular toolkit or framework; instead, he explains how you can write an "engine" of your own. He starts with a good intro to AJAX, including explanations of how to use both XML and JSON in the response, moves on to the basic principles of object-oriented JavaScript, and then provides examples of reusable JavaScript components to include in your own JavaScript/AJAX engine. Whether you're seeking to reinvent the wheel and write such an engine yourself, or just have a hankering to understand how a toolkit like Dojo or script.aculo.us is constructed, this is great information. Where Zakas' book was an all-encompassing head first dive into deep JavaScript, this book is a briefer but still quite thorough tutorial that gets to the critical information quickly.

The book also includes useful chapters on security and best practices.

Where the book is lacking is in its coverage of server-side interaction. While it concentrates on PHP, it provides some examples of connecting to ASP.NET and ColdFusion, but... there's no mention whatsoever about Java/J2EE. (Ryan Asleson's "Pro Ajax and Java Frameworks" does provide that very sort of information, covering Struts, Spring, and JSF.) Still, where this book shines is in its in-depth explanation of how JavaScript/AJAX toolkits work and how you build your own or extend existing ones. This is still the only book I've seen that even attempts to do that.

New to Ajax? You may want to look elsewhere ..........2006-12-13

I've been working on the Web for a handful+ of years, but save for a brief stunt back in the late 90s, I haven't had much use for JavaScript (with the exception of a few one/two-liners). As such, I came to this book as a new-comer to Ajax.

I also like to learn by way of example, instead of explanation, so code examples are a big plus, if not a requirement.

Unfortunately, from this background, my expectations for this book appear to have been set too high. Granted, it may be because of the lack of full examples in the book (and that they are not available online - more on this momentarily). In fact, that's probably the only thing holding me back.

There's minor errors in code in the book as well, but that's to be expected, and a second edition/printing will fix most of these. By itself, this shouldn't hold you back.

But as a beginner's resource, I'm not sure that this is the book you'd want to pick up. I actually recommend that you take a look elsewhere, particularly online, for how to start with Ajax.

Once you've got the basics down, then you can take a look at this book, as it does provide from very good tips as far as keeping your code standardized.

Had I been the first reviewer, I would have given this book four stars. Since I was not, I have decided to give it three. This is because I feel it's a good book, but not for as large an audience as you may think, based upon reading the description. Again, I feel that this book is more for if you've worked with Ajax, but not in a standard/formal way.

Regarding the code I mentioned above, while it's true that there is a zip file of the code files, I don't feel that it truly contains all of the necessary code. Again, keep in mind that I like to work with full code examples, especially when we're talking about JavaScript (since code is sometimes required in the HEAD, and sometimes not).

I have another Developer's Library book, PHP and MySQL Web Development (the Third Edition), so that's part of why my expectations may have been so high. But, I wasn't expecting the amount of full code that the ColdFusion MX 7 'blue books' provides. ;)

Even if you don't have a working application, let me see where you, the author, are at the end of a section or chapter, even if we're just creating one new file and/or adding code to an existing/new file. This goes for whether you write online or not. If there's code in a chapter, and it's not a snippet, than I'd like to see how the full document's code looks.

I don't care that it's not a complete application, I just may want to have your code on screen while I read through the chapter.

Flickr Mashups (Programmer to Programmer)

Average customer rating:

Learning to mesh Flickr content with other site content...
Learn how to use flickr to the fullest!

Flickr Mashups (Programmer to Programmer)
David A. Wilkinson
Manufacturer: Wrox
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0470097744

Book Description

Expert Flickr developer David Wilkinson guides you through a series of software projects that show you how to build mashups using the popular photo service Flickr. He explains the process of remixing Flickr on your own web site and then mashing it up. Along the way, you’ll learn how to take advantage of mashup technologies such as REST, Ajax, RSS, and JSON. Plus, hands-on examples will help you gain the skills to design a variety of remixes and mashups that take advantage of Flickr’s core services.

Customer Reviews:

Learning to mesh Flickr content with other site content..........2007-04-10

It's hard not to get inundated with all the talk of "Web 2.0" these days... Everything is "Ajax this, mashup that". But what exactly *is* a mashup, and how do you build one? Wrox has started a Mashup series of books, and I got a chance to take a look at Flickr Mashups by David Wilkinson. This is an excellent intro to the concept, focused on the Flickr website for content manipulation.

Contents: Rewriting the Web; Flickr - A Short Tour; Getting Ready to Mash; The Flickr API; Flickr Feeds; Remixing Flickr Using the API; Authenticating with Flickr; Uploading Photos; Remixing Flickr Using Greasemonkey; Working with ImageMagick, Visualizing the News; Searching the Blogosphere; Displaying Your Photos with Google Maps; Caching Your Data; Answers to Exercises; Flickr API Methods; Response Data Structures; Useful Resources; Index

To start with, you shouldn't have the expectation that you'll be able to (or even want to) run every mashup that's here. Rather than confine his examples to a single small set of technology tools, Wilkinson uses a wide array of software, such as PHP, Perl, JavaScript, Java, Greasemonkey, ImageMagick, and others. When he first talks about a technology like Greasemonkey, he gives some basic information to get the software and install it. From there, he builds the mashup with some pretty detailed explanations on the code and results. He states in the forward that the examples *should* be easy enough to follow even if you're not terribly familiar with the language, like PHP. Overall that seems to be the case. But to be honest, you'll probably get a lot more out of the book if you're already conversant with PHP, as a lot of the examples use that. But even if the particular language of the example isn't your forte, you should be able to take the general idea and apply the concepts to your tool of choice.

Another thing that is done very well done in this book is an explanation of the Flickr API. A solid, accessible API is critical to successful mashup use, and his explanation of how the Flickr API works is excellent. From getting your own API key to creating SQL feeds of Flickr data, he covers a number of possibilities that should have any photo-happy mashup artist coding in short order. The Flickr site and API are a constant work in progress, so you can't view this as a definitive guide to the package. The only way you can get that is to visit the website. But you'll receive a grounding in the fundamentals here, so you'll be well-equipped to handle the new stuff as it comes out.

Overall, I think this is a great series, and I'm looking forward to reading other Mashup titles. Flickr Mashups got the brain moving in areas I had never thought of, and I can see how this would be a must-read for any coder who can't live without their Flickr subscription...

Learn how to use flickr to the fullest!.......2007-02-05

Flickr is the photo sharing web application that started making people like taking photos again, Of course since flickr came on the scene many others have come up such as Zoomr and Yahoo Photos but neither allow developers to truly make use of its data with the flick api which allows sharing and manipulation of its photo data.

This is the first book covering this topic of creating a mashup with flickr so it has the pressure of covering the right material to help newbies like me to understand how to use an api. Although a background in web scripting and or JavaScript is not required since the material is not too technical and the author explains it well enough that the reader does not need to know too much.

The first chapter covers what are mashups and what technologies are used such as client technologies like HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript and DOM, JSON and Ajax. Then the author briefly explains the server-side technologies that are involved like PHP, Perl, REST, SOAP, and databases. A nice introduction on the many pieces of web mashups.

The next chapter gives a quick introduction on using flickr aw a user on how to use some of the tools of flickr like the organizr (to organize your photos into sets), tagging, geo-tagging interface, joining groups, and linking your photos.

The third chapter gets started with getting the flickr API key. Once you get the key the author goes into showing you how to setup your development environment. The author goes though setting up an environment with ASP using IIS (Internet Information Server) and PHP with Apache as well as using Perl in a Windows or Unix environment. Since mashups can use any server-side technology, it is great that the author explains three of the most popular ones for broad range of server-side technologies.

The next chapter focuses in detail about the flickr API itself. Flickr accepts API calls in three different formats such as REST, SOAP, and XML-RPC. The author gives of each even though in my opinion using REST is the easiest and most common. Then flickr methods and objects are dicussed in showing the reader how to retrieve flickr images in any variation by invoking the specific methods and send the right parameters. The author gives some good examples of creating photostreams and putting specific images on your web page.

Chapter 5 goes though the client-side version of manipulating a flickr badge and putting the requests on the server as well. Chapter 6 goes through showing an image gallery using sever-side script in PHP and mixing in a little Ajax for good measure. Chapter 7 shows you how to authenticate using an API kit with some open source PHP tools to create some more robust applications. Chapter 8 shows you how to create an upload page using the flickr api.

The rest of the book goes into more examples of flickr mashups using other open source tools like ImageMagick, GoogleMaps, GreaseMonkey, RSS, Technorati, and others. Too much to cover but this book has it all. A great book on learning more about mashups and api ans using the flickr api to create some new and exciting web applications.

Average customer rating:

Worthwhile
A complete Guide for the Digital Web 2.0

Digital Web 2.0 (Mage: The Ascension)
Roger Gaudreau , S. John Ross , Jen Clodius , and Jaymi Wiley
Manufacturer: White Wolf Games Studio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1565044266

Customer Reviews:

Worthwhile.......2000-03-13

This book is a major overhaul of the earlier Digital Web book for Mage: The Ascension. It has lots of little detail-ey improvements over the first edition, and some nice thoughtful material about games in the web, and storytelling in general. I'm not sure I'd encourage anyone to buy it if they had the eariler edition, unless they're obsessed with running games in the Web. But a modern Mage game ought to have *some* Digital Web in it, and if you don't have any verion of this book, I highly reccomend it. Also hs plenty of cool terminology and saucy web culture tidbits, and an interesting piece of history on the "recent crash" of the Web.

A complete Guide for the Digital Web 2.0.......1999-06-05

The Digital Web 2.0 is a book full of information about de Digital Web and the virtual reality world that makes a good home for the Virtual Adepts. These creatures of magic, once followers of the traditions, now spend their time exploring this new realm. With the hope that some day they will bring all the human kind to the acension. The plans are to take all in to this digital web. The book itself doesn't explain how this will be posible, but explain te secrets areas of these realm, as well the most comon places to hang out and search for hot information. At the same time indicate waves of moving, fighting and hacking in the tree posibles ways of inmersion. The normal, the astral und the holistical. Each one have their advantages, and each one have their ones problems. The digital web, and his famous meeting place Spy Demise are the structural line of this book, and the structure is very good.

Average customer rating:

Chris Seibold MyMac.com Book Review
Good techniques

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 Idea Kit
Lisa Matthews
Manufacturer: Adobe Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 032113009X

Book Description

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 Idea Kit adds a unique twist to the melange: It steps you through the processes of creating special effects and fixing problems in digital images and then hones in on how to use those images to easily create 20 fun and useful projects. Whether you're a hobbyist who wants to use your snapshots to create a postcard, flyer, or personal Web page; or a business professional looking to create slide presentations, a customized Web gallery, or custom CD and video covers--you'll find that Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 Idea Kit is your new best friend.

Working templates of each project are included on the CD-ROM, making it easy to produce polished finished projects. The book begins by stepping you through the basics of image correction, including how to color images by hand and add borders, and then moves on to explain basic layout strategies for a number of projects: using photographs in newsletters and creating flyers, posters, postcards, and more. The latter part of the book focuses on more complex layout projects such as slide presentations, Web pages, and banners. Loaded with step-by-step instructions and handy, time-saving templates, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 Idea Kit lets you produce creative digital-image projects without reinventing the wheel.

Customer Reviews:

Broad spectrum of visual tips, techniques and effects!.......2004-05-18

"GPU Gems" edited by Randima Fernando (Addison-Wesley, 2004, ISBN 0-321-22832-4) is a collection of white papers describing techniques and practical applications useful in today's programmable graphical processing units. The full color hardcover text is 816 pages and includes a CD-ROM that includes working demos and source for most of the articles presented in the book. The text retails for $59.99.

The text is divided into six major parts: natural effects, lighting and shadows, materials, image progressing, performance and practicalities, and beyond triangles. Each part has anywhere between 5 to 9 chapters (for an overall total of 42 chapters). The chapters are separate white papers related to the overall part's major topic. For example, the natural effects part contains chapters on water caustics, Perlin noise, creating realistic fire, and diffraction just to name a few.

Generally, each chapter has an introduction, a background with some mathematics, an implementation occasionally with some partial source code, a conclusion, and key references. While a different author writes each chapter, the overall feel of the book is consistent and smooth. The chapters read very similar to a SIGGRAPH paper without as much math or specific detail.

Take for example, the chapter on stereograms - a process by which a 2D image encodes stereo information that when viewed correctly reveals a 3D scene. The chapter has brief background section that includes several helpful color examples. The author discusses how to create such an image using the fragment program capabilities of a GPU using the z-buffer as a depth map and provides a demo program on the CD. Many of the articles follow the same format - enough of a topic to provide understanding, but not enough depth to be comprehensive or fully instructional.

The topics presented are extremely current. Many of the samples provided on the CD required the latest video hardware (GeForce4 or better) and latest drivers to run. The sample programs and demos require shader support, Cg, OpenGL, or the latest version of DirectX to run. On the plus side, the majority of the companion topics included pre-compiled binaries (but not the runtime dynamic link libraries) or an AVI illustrating the subject in addition to the source code. While the CD contains over 600 MB of examples from the text, it provided only 23 of the 42 topics covered in the book. Since most of the articles provide an overview and references to a topic, additional material on the CD would have been beneficial.

The majority of the contributors are from the Nvidia Corporation which causes the book to bias toward their hardware and developer tools. In fact, one of the chapters is featured FX Composer, Nvidia's shader tool. The source code is a mixture of different shader languages from Microsoft's HLSL to Nvidia's Cg - with various authors using whatever was comfortable or convenient. Although the majority of the material presented is applicable to other hardware, it is critical to have a broad understanding of various shader languages if porting to specific hardware is important.

I found the wide range of subjects quite interesting - and was refreshed that the topics actually seemed "ahead of the curve" in terms of hardware requirements. However in order to provide more subject depth, it seemed that the text could have been split into two volumes in order to expand the existing chapters with sufficient depth. As the material is just enough to get one started, the subject treatment may disappoint some readers seeking to apply the clever and unique techniques presented in the book directly or those hoping to use the book as an opportunity to learn some of the advanced features provided in a programming graphical processing unit.

Very hard to read.......2004-05-17

Atricles are teribly organaized and nothing is followed through. For instace this book starts with explaination on how to render water. First article indicates that good way to do it would be by summing sin waves and then goes on with derivation. Yet a lot of questions are not answered such is sum of sines is used to represent one wave? multiple waves? all the waves? Graphs that suposed to explain equations are done in 2D, while equations themselfs are in 3D (and difference in drammatic). Then article indicates that sin sums do not represent water waves very well and moves to another equation (which leaves a question of why did they waste time with derivations?) It is also not clear on how this data, from ether equation is going to be used (such as to displace a vertex? or use it for bump mapping, or maybe something else) Other articles seems to bounce a lot too without explaining anything in depth. NVidia examples a tad better (but they cover less interesting points IMHO), thus one star vs zero. There are often no exmples for the topics covered which only makes it harder to understand (for instance i really wanted to see some for article about improving perspective shadow maps). I guess this is expected as good coders are often not so great at writing, but I guess at this price I expected more. Ohh and yes book is very nicely printed, fully in color.

Very good!!!.......2004-05-14

One of the rare books I found helpfull, it goes through important details and doesn't stop at junks. This book should be a university reference that teach real-time special effects.
I highly advise it to 3D and game programmers.

Wow!.......2004-04-27

Addison-Wesley and nVIDIA went all out on this book. Every page is color. This means all of the code samples, graphics, everything, is in color. This is not only an impressive trick, it also makes a book on computer graphics a lot easier to read. To understand what a particular algorithm is trying to do with color you needn't go to the center of the book, the graphic is right there.

The content of the book is somewhat mixed. It's done as a collection of papers so the writing tends to vary from verbose to terse. For example the chapter on depth-of-field covers five different techniques in 15 pages with 13 medium to large graphics. That's impressive compression, but it means that it is very terse and the chapter amounts to little more than an overview. The very next chapter, on high-quality filtering, weighing in at 25 pages has a better balance of overview and detail.

Despite it's inconsistencies the book is still a wonderful resource and, frankly, a nice coffee table book to boot. It's even got some unintentionally funny parts, like the section header before page 3 that shows the most un-natural looking monster you have ever seen with the title 'Natural Effects'. Hardly. Still, a great book and a fun read. Bravo AW and nVIDIA.

A Killer Book for HARD CORE Programmers.......2004-04-12

Hard core graphics programming is definitely an area that separates the men from the boys. If your idea of graphics programming is making a ball bounce across the screen in Flash or Powerpoint, avoid this book. If you are a die hard programmer with a strong mathematical background looking to create some really kick a33 effects, this book is made for you.

The background stuff: There are just under 50 authors that have collaborated to create this book. Just about all of them have a Ph.D from big name schools and I believe every one of them has at least a Master's degree. Most, but not all are folks from NVIDIA. The whole book is about 800 pages including intro/indexes et al.

I really liked the book, but there's two things wrong with it. 1) If you don't have a VERY strong background in Graphics programming, you will be utterly clueless what's going on. There's No middle ground. 2) You need a pretty powerful graphics card to work through the examples, which, considering the target audience isn't unfair for them to assume. I have a fairly powerful card on my desktops, but my laptop just doesn't cut it and that's kind of a pain if you read on the run like I do.

As far as negative comments go, that's it.

So what's cool about it? The EFFECTS! Like I mentioned, if there's a cool special effect in a video game or movie, this book shows you how to do it. To summarize a few:

1) Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. If you are familiar with the game and the large bodies of water that are employed, Chapter 1 explains it in depth. There's a good discussion of Gerstner waves , vertex shading and overall simulation models.
2) Fire in the Vulcan. This effect was "Inspired by the Balrog creature in The Lord of the Rings movies, our goal was to display a monster that would be the source of raging flames..." Different variations of this theme have been around for a while and just about any gamer will be familiar with it. It's much more complex than the previously mentioned effect, but it's also more much compelling.
3) Shadow Mapping. Virtually every driving/racing game you've played employs extensive use of Shadow Mapping. The book dedicates 3 Chapters (12, 13 & 14) to the subject and it's discussion is superb. While I don't personally find this the most interesting topic, it's probably the best written area of the book.
4) Glow - Very Very cool. The scenario is the Tron 2.0 video game, but it's absolutely amazing. Although there was very little math here and the discussion was pretty much theory, I had a little (see a LOT) of difficulty re-creating the effects. The code accompanying the book includes everything for the chapter, but recreating my Cityscape wasn't happening. In all fairness though I was pretty excited with the effect and go into coding before reading it another time or two like I should have.
5) One last really impressive area is Filtering. There are many apps where the UI is important but ancillary nonetheless. When I fire up XDesktop, I don't need everything pulsing and glowing doing neat stuff but eating up processor cycles. On the other hand, video games better perform well and anything video centric better be smooth, fast and cool.

All in all I think this book is first rate. The effects absolutely rock, all of them are cool, and the picture quality in the book is superb. Just about every cool effect you'll want to deal with it covered in depth here and you won't leave the table hungry. I really can't emphasize enough though, this isn't a book for hobbyists. Much of the text is written primarily in symbolic math grammar and some of the simpler math involves manipulating Jacobian matricies for instance. If you want to really polish your graphics skills, this book is for you.

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Gpu Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics
Randima Fernando
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OUA4M0

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